Mention "Heartland" and Ang Mo Kio comes to mind for many Singaporeans. Planned and developed in the 1970s, Ang Mo Kio is a quintessential Housing and Development Board (HDB) heartland with its mature neighbourhoods, good hawker food, strong neighbourly relationships and small businesses and shops which have been operating since the town was built.
Before the housing town came about, this area was largely covered with secondary forests, swamps and farmland. A 1936 map shows that part of it was marked as a forest reserve under colonial government. One of the earliest references to this area is in a 1849 report on agriculture in Singapore, written by J T Thomson (1821-1884), Government Surveyor, which mentioned that Amokiah, the name for Ang Mo Kio then, contained sandstone. Early maps of Singapore refer to the area as Amokiah as well. By the 1990s, the area was referred to as Ang Mo Kio